Future Perspectives on Scarless Surgery: Where We Have Been and Where We Are Going

Abstract

Surgeons are the directors of the future in surgery. Since the dawn of surgery, surgeons have been pushing the envelope and impatiently awaiting technology to catch up. In the early days of surgery, there was more interest in how large an incision could be made and how much exposure could be achieved. Patients were proud to show off their stem-to-stern incision and brag they survived. In this new era, surgery has taken a 180°turn, and we pride ourselves on doing the most surgery through the smallest incision, or even better, no incision. This has been the birth of scarless surgery. Although laparoscopy has been practiced since the early 1900s, it was not until the advent of the charge-coupled device (CCD) that videoscopic surgery rose to prime time.